The Defiant Wife (The Three Mrs #2) - Jess Michaels Page 0,64
the particulars so that I could ascertain if this person is an acceptable guard,” Pippa said.
Abigail arched a brow. “I’m sure that went well.”
“I surprised him, I’m sure.”
“You needn’t keep calling him Lord Leighton, not in front of us,” Celeste said softly.
Pippa bowed her head. “I have to practice doing so. Calling him by his first name was always too familiar. I need to start distancing myself and this is a step in that process. I wish I could stop thinking about him as Rhys. That will be much harder.”
“Oh, dearest,” Abigail said, and caught her hand. “Are you certain you don’t want to talk more about it?”
“I’m certain,” Pippa said. “I must be certain. And I must focus on Rosie now, and what she might want from Kenley. The guard is fine, of course. I hope his presence will keep the child safe, but I don’t know. Rosie is wily and resourceful, duplicitous and sly. It took me a long time to realize she was my husband’s lover when they were under my very nose. She’s certainly the sort of person who could subvert any security measures even the Earl of Leighton put in place.”
“You want to do something about it?” Abigail said.
Pippa nodded. “I think I…we…should perhaps try to find her ourselves.”
Celeste pushed from the table and backed away. “She and Erasmus worked together not just to deceive you, but to fake his death. She was part of his final plan to kill us all. To frame Abigail for a murder that didn’t happen. How can you want to seek such a person out?”
“But for Erasmus, I don’t know that she would have hatched such a plan herself,” Pippa said. “Certainly she turned her ire on him quickly enough, which shows she questioned what he desired. But I understand your hesitation, Celeste. He put the gun in your back. And you have so much to lose. If you don’t want to be part of my scheme—we’ll call it what it is, a scheme—I understand.”
“Surely Rhys and Owen are already looking into this themselves,” Abigail suggested, even as she got up and slid her arm around Celeste to comfort her. “Don’t you trust them to take care of it?”
“I do, completely,” Pippa said. “But I don’t trust that Rosie would allow herself to be caught by them.”
“And why would she allow us to catch her?” Celeste asked. “There is no love lost between us.”
“No, but in her heart, she must know that we share a bond. She was a victim of Erasmus as well as an accomplice. If we reach out, she might believe she has more sympathy, especially if we do it right. I doubt there is any chance she feels that would happen if she spoke to Rhys.”
Abigail pursed her lips as she and Celeste exchanged a look. “That’s a good point,” Abigail said.
Pippa gave a small smile. “Excellent. I’ve been trying to put together a good point for hours, so I’m pleased I succeeded.”
Celeste pulled away and paced the room a moment, a troubled expression on her face. Pippa crossed to her and caught her hands. “If this is too much for you, I entirely understand. You don’t have to take part in this.”
Celeste shook her head. “Owen would be very angry if he found out I was going behind his back.”
“Aren’t you angry he didn’t tell you about Rosie, himself?” Pippa asked, thinking again of her encounter with Rhys that afternoon.
“No,” Celeste said. “He is well aware of my emotional reaction to the events of a few weeks ago. He comforts me through the nightmares when they come. If he didn’t tell me, I know in my heart it was only to protect me. And that he would have told me eventually, when the time was right.”
Pippa blinked. What her friend was describing was faith. Absolute faith in the best intentions of a partner, in the strength of a bond that could not be broken by any foolishness. Celeste was lucky to have it. Pippa couldn’t threaten it.
“I would feel…better…” she said slowly. “…if someone I trusted in every way was here in the house with Kenley.”
“Yes,” Abigail said. “That’s an excellent idea.”
“You don’t want me at your side?” Celeste whispered.
“Pippa and I have much less to lose,” Abigail clarified. “We love you too much to threaten what you’ve built. At any rate, you would be helping because you’d be very aware of what dangers existed for Kenley.”